As we enter Fall here in New Hampshire, I’ve been growing tired of my current blog design. Todays’ view isn’t set in stone and since the beer blog is far behind my main blog in traffic, I was thinking of experimenting with a change here. I wanted a design that looked decent on desktop browsers and was easier to read on mobile. I haven’t quite achieved that yet but this is just a test. Feedback is appreciated but really it’s how the design makes me feel when I re-read my own posts a few times a week for spelling errors.

Ideally, something flat, clean and not too annoying that loads fast is my goal. Photos on my blog take up quite a bit of kilobytes in the loading space and I’m not utilizing any custom CSS. We’ll see how this one feels.

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In other news, I’ve removed Google Analytics and a few other javascript / cookie trackers. This helps the site load faster and ensures the privacy of my readers as they decide to visit and read the rumblings I’ve mashed out on the keyboard. I believe your privacy is very important and you should choose to let Google, Adobe, WordPress and other places know about your browsing habits. If you want to install Bonzi Buddy on your computer, go right ahead but this site won’t track you.

Apache has logs on my web-server and these will be sufficient in knowing who you are and where you came from. I wasn’t really looking at Google Analytics anyway.

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While I have you, maybe it’s a good time to mention that I have a lot of things in the works. Nothing too exciting that you should post to Facebook about but I am traveling to Chicago again for Bourbon County this year (3rd year in a row) but instead of 8 hours out in the cold on Black Friday, I’ll be going 2 weeks earlier for “Rare Day”. If the ticket prices drop, I might go back 2 weeks later for more stuff but I’m really hoping to get my BCS fill in Massachusetts this year. A case of BCS usually lasts me a year so that’s the goal. I enjoy the beer quite a bit more than any other Imperial Stout.

In January, I’m planning a 2-week road trip down to Asheville, Savanna, Key West, Tampa, New Orleans then north to the Bourbon Trail and to Jackie O’s in Ohio before coming home. It should be a ton of fun and a nice break from the cold weather we have up here on the NH/VT border. The low is 24 degrees this Sunday. Time to put on those Winter tires.

In March and May, I’m planning trips to Belgium along with France, Netherlands and Copenhagen Denmark. The first trip will likely be a week long and the 2nd will just be 4 days. Trying to make it to Night of the Great Thirst, Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation and Copenhagen Beer Celebration next year. Hopefully all of the dates work out.

It’s going to be business as usual on this site. I have some things in the works on my other blog but those will be separate from beer.

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That’s it for now. Thanks to you all for reading. Don’t forget that I regularly post stuff to Instagram and Twitter if you’re curious.